The Motion of Puppets (25 page)

“It could be a wild goose chase,” Theo said, “but we aim to find those people who made that puppet that looks like Kay. You have to admit the resemblance. I've reason to believe they might tell me something.”

“Aye, but it's a lang road that's no goat a turnin'.”

“Inscrutable as ever, my dear.” Dolores had rolled silently into the parlor. The dog left Theo's side and loped over to greet her. Looking older now, and careworn, she lifted her arms to Theo, and as he embraced her, he fought back tears. She was a ghost. He had forgotten how much she looked like her daughter, a resemblance that pierced him yet again and opened the hole in his heart.

*   *   *

They put Noë in a corner and wrapped her in a musty old horse blanket, and for the next three nights, someone always sat beside her, holding her hand and telling her everything was going to be all right. She pulled at the paper skin of her scalp, peeling back layers, so Firkin and Nix forcibly bound her hands in gloves crafted from twine. The hardest moments were just after midnight when everyone woke, groggy from slumber, and just before dawn when everyone had to return to their places and forgo control. Noë yelled upon waking and cursed before sleeping, always the same plea to be allowed to go home, and at first they reminded her just how impossible that was, and how she would survive in any case, as a puppet in the wind and the rain, not to mention the coming ice and snow. Such bitter foreshadowings of winter only made matters worse.

On the fourth night, Kay took her turn to watch over Noë. She sang to her, tunes her mother used to sing, lullabies and nonsense songs, and the music seemed to ease her troubled mind. They nestled in the corner of the stall, warm against the chilly night. “You're the only one who cares,” Noë said. “The only one who understands. There is something inside my head. Please untie my hands.”

“You know I can't do that,” Kay said. “The Queen would have my head.”

“You must let me be free. Pay no attention to the Queen.”

“But Mr. Firkin would catch us.”

“Surely you jest. He's nothing more than a tub of hot air.”

“I can't, Noë, I wish I could.”

She let out a drawn-out hiss. “Listen, then, and tell me if you hear it, too, and perhaps once you hear the noises in my brain, you'll change your mind.” Opening her mouth wide, Noë pressed her lips against Kay's ear and held still. All Kay could hear was breathing, and she shook her head. So Noë shifted and pressed her ear against Kay's ear, and they sat cheek to cheek for some time until the hum, faint and distant, began. An electric current going up and down in volume like an oscillating fan.

Alarmed, Kay faced her. “There
is
something in your head besides thoughts and ideas.”

“And I can't very well do anything about it like this.” Noë held up her twine-bound hands, useless as mittens. “My brain is going to explode. I'll go mad.”

“I can't untie you.”

“Poke a hole in it,” Noë said. “It doesn't have to be big. A little puncture, just enough to let out the pressure, or I'll just burst.”

The thought of stabbing her friend in the head mortified Kay, but she could see the agony and need in her eyes. Making sure the others were occupied, she searched for a sharp object. When she dropped to her hands and knees, Kay had to fight off the advances of the little dog, who thought she was playing a game. On the floor, she spied wedged in a corner an old horseshoe nail, a bit rusted but keen enough. She pricked a hole in her thumb, surprised by how little pain she felt, and returning to Noë's side, she double-checked on the weird noise by pressing ear to ear. “I don't want to hurt you.”

“It won't. Just a small incision, somewhere no one will notice.” Noë turned and bowed her head, exposing the base of her skull.

The nail punctured the varnished paper with ease, but Noë jerked at the sensation, and a two-inch vertical cut opened. Kay gasped at what she had done.

A pearl of amber liquid formed at the bottom of the wound and oozed in a long strand that dripped to Kay's lap. Noë groaned with relief as the buzzing grew louder, and from the slit emerged an orange and black honeybee, which perched on the fold of paper skin, tasting the air and testing its wings before flying away. A second bee followed quickly, likewise departing from her head, and then all at once, dozens of angry bees emerged, their buzz grinding louder and louder. Nix was the first to notice the swarm. Dropping a hoop, the clown shouted a warning, and the stalls were suddenly busy with flailing arms and shouts as the bees poured forth, swirling pell-mell around the puppets' heads, alighting and taking flight again. Mr. Firkin rolled about, calling for order. The Sisters screamed with fright, and the Old Hag cradled the Dog against her chest as it yapped at the insects, desperate to bite and swallow these bizarre toys.

The honey flowed freely and pooled on the floor behind Noë, who had crumpled to her knees and thrown back her head, and some of the bees raced to the spot to collect their spilled food. As soon as her head emptied, Noë fainted, and a few bees crawled on her resting body, buzzing angrily as they looked for a way back inside. Squeezing the nail in her hand, Kay crouched next to her, wondering if she had killed her. When she tried to brush them away, she felt a bee land on her hand and plunge its stinger into the web of skin between her thumb and index finger. She watched in fascination as it took flight, ripping the weapon from its abdomen, and stumbled in the air and plunged to its death. They were dying all around her. Those that hadn't sacrificed their stingers fell victim to Mr. Firkin's ingenious trap. He had spaded the honey from the floor into a gunnysack and lured them to it, tying the end with twine when most of the hive had gathered. The few bees that had avoided either fate eventually found their way out of the room and flew off to parts unknown.

While the bees were herded away, the Good Fairy attended to Noë. She cleaned her best as she could of the sticky honey, and taking the horseshoe nail from Kay and a length of twine, she sutured together the ragged ends of the paper wound. The whole time Noë said not a word, the expression on her face as blank as a doll's. Kay watched the operation, torn between guilt and hope, and when order was finally restored, she was held for an accounting. The puppets arranged themselves in two rows along the stalls, and the Queen paced back and forth between the troops, boiling her thoughts.

“And just whose brilliant idea was this? To plague us with this swarm?”

“Mine, Your Highness,” Kay volunteered. “Though I had no idea about the bees—”

“You don't think. You hear a sound inside a head, so you cut a hole? What on earth gave you the idea that it was allowed?”

Noë spoke for the first time. “I asked her to, Your Majesty. I was going mad and needed some relief.”

“And you thought that poking a hole in your brain would help? Did you not consider that if you open your mind, you will release everything it holds?”

Kay pondered the question and thought it most unfair. “She had bees in her brain.”

“And that gives you the right to let them out where they might attack the rest of us? Have you not heard of keeping your thoughts to yourself? Had Mr. Firkin here not been as clever, those nasty things might have flown up my nose or into your ear, and then where would we all be? Mad as hatters. Mad as March hares. Mad as your friend there, missy.”

“I beg your pardon, but I was only trying to help.”

Noë stepped up to her own defense. “I feel much better now, I do. No more racket in my mind.”

“Have you stopped to consider,” the Queen asked, “that these bees were not the cause of her problems but a symptom of them? I didn't think so. There will be no more poking of holes in anyone's head, do you understand? No more fraternizing at all between the two of you plotters.”

The heartbreak showing in her eyes, Noë could not bear to look at Kay. The Queen stepped before her and with a wave of her hand demanded that she bow down. “You are to no longer complain of bees in the brain. I command you to give up this nonsense of madness and the desire to escape. You are a puppet of the Quatre Mains, and it is high time you started behaving like one.”

Her robes sweeping the air, the Queen quickly turned to Kay. “And as for you, learn your place and like it. Or I shall lump you till you do. I want you to go to the corner and stay there, until I say you may be excused. You are hereby charged with ensuring that no bees will come near our person … not one, you understand? And you will clean up the bodies. Well, what are you waiting for?”

Kay felt like a little schoolgirl, sitting by herself in the corner, but she was glad that she had tried to help Noë, who seemed better already, the madness drained, a pleasing dullness in the way she moved. As for the petty tyrant who ruled their world, the Queen must be obeyed, but loyalty is best earned and never coerced. Kay would bide her time. She would find a way to show that hearts trump the Queen.

 

20

They gathered around the television set like a nuclear family. Theo, Egon, and Mitchell on the sofa, Mrs. Mackintosh perched on an ottoman, and Dolores in her wheelchair, the dog dozing at her feet. The Yankee pot roast had disappeared, the apple tart as well, and night had settled into the restive hours between supper and bedtime. Through sheer persistence, Dolores had been able to track down a copy of the video recording from the TV station in Burlington, and they were all ready for another point of view on the Halloween parade.

The biggest difference between the recordings was the quality and higher resolution. The whole piece had been constructed like a story and not merely a series of images marching across the screen. However, one did not see as much of the puppets on the news as they had on the home movie. More intercuts of the children and parents watching the parade go by, and a cute ten seconds of a little girl telling the reporter which puppet was her favorite. “The sticks one,” she had said. Kay had appeared twice in the story, both times fleetingly—in the parade and in the aftermath in the parking lot.

“I'm surprised you spotted her,” Theo said.

“She's sharper than you think,” Mrs. Mackintosh said.

“Quiet, the both of you,” Dolores said. “I badgered them to send the B roll as well.”

Mitchell leaned forward. “B roll?”

“All the background stuff they shoot and then splice into the main story. Just watch.”

The cameraman had started with a panorama of the decorated streets of the small town, the children gathered at the edge of the sidewalk, sitting on the curb, waiting for the show. The footage jumped to the actual parade, three full minutes, with good shots of each of the puppets, from the tubby barrel man at the head to the giant queen at the end. Kay appeared from a different angle than in the home movie. She was clear and crisp and the shot stayed with her longer as her handler wobbled her forward. At the moment the puppet's face was closest to the lens, Dolores froze the picture.

“That's her. I would know my own daughter anywhere.”

Mrs. Mackintosh swiveled on the ottoman to face the three men. “I nearly fainted when I saw her. Whoever made that doll surely knew Miss Kay.”

Theo stared at the image on the screen. So much time had passed since he had last seen her. Lately he had been wondering just how true the face he conjured in his imagination was, between the idealized and the real, the desire to see her again so great that he had forgotten precisely what she looked like. Sometimes he could not picture her at all, and other times, he could close his eyes and re-create all the colors of her eyes, a rough patch of skin on her hand, a beauty mark behind her left ear. The paradox fell apart as he stared at the face on the TV. He, too, was certain that the puppet had been copied from his wife's face.

Dolores pressed Play, and Kay walked out of the frame. There was the fantastical creature made of sticks and the titanic queen, and then the scene shifted to the parking lots, interviews with children not quite charming enough to air. The puppets moved about in the background, and now and then, he caught a glimpse of Kay. Toward the end, a few of the handlers unburdened themselves of the effigies. They were just college kids, the same as his own charges. A few seconds of the puppets leaning against light poles and walls like a gang of hooligans, and then the tape suddenly scrambled and another story picked up, something about a moose, that had been recorded over. Just as the original B roll would have been by now. Theo was grateful for Dolores's quick thinking and tenacity in securing a copy before it was too late. They had proof. But of what?

“I know who they are,” Dolores said. “I've tracked them down.”

“She's a Sherlock on the Internet,” said Mrs. Mackintosh.

Dolores reached for a folder on the end table and triumphantly held up the evidence. “The Northeast Kingdom Puppet Company, established in 1973. Right here in Vermont. ‘Making street art and political theater to reenchant and reclaim the world.' Whatever that might mean.”

Mitchell cleared his throat. “So how did your daughter come to be a puppet?”

Nobody seemed to notice that he had misspoken.

“That, my friend, is what I expect you to find out and report back to me. Could be someone remembers her when she lived here, but that hasn't been for years, and, besides, why does she show up now? If there's a connection, maybe we can find out what's happened to Kay.”

From his spot in the middle of the sofa, Egon jumped into action. “Let's go, if we are to find this place.”

“Not tonight,” Dolores said. “It's a three-hour drive on some mighty windy back roads, almost to Canada, and you boys need your beauty sleep. Mackintosh here has made up beds for you all. Get a fresh start in the morning.”

Mrs. Mackintosh showed Egon and Mitchell to their bedroom on the upper floor, cleaned and aired out for their stay, leaving Dolores and Theo alone in the parlor. They watched the tape again, stopping it whenever Kay appeared, moving ahead frame by frame, until they could bear it no longer. She flicked the switch, and silence pressed down like a stone.